Many people experience difficulty either in falling asleep or staying asleep. There are many alternative treatments that may help, including different meditation techniques. Meditation for sleep is touted as a drug-free way of relaxing the mind and the body enough to allow healthy sleep cycles to occur. The benefits of practicing meditation for sleep include a better quality of sleep and less time spent on trying to get to sleep.
The benefits don’t happen immediately because usually it takes a bit of practice to get the hang of meditation. The basics — clearing your mind of all thought and worry — sound easy, but practitioners have found that it’s a little more difficult than they first thought it would be. It isn’t so difficult, however, that it can’t be accomplished with some practice and a quiet environment.
People have used meditation for hundreds of years to calm their minds, deal with sickness and promote a sense of well-being, free of stressors. Modern science has learned these benefits can be measured in the body’s responses. The benefits of meditation for sleep are also undergoing additional study.
Meditation for sleep can be performed just before bedtime. Patients reap the benefits in the form of better sleep, but they can also experience additional improvements, such as a lessening of the symptoms of depression. People who routinely fail to sleep well have an increased rate of depression as well as an increased risk for diabetes and other physical ailments.
Using meditation for sleep improvements doesn’t take a lot of time and it doesn’t cost anything except some practice and determination. It can take a half hour or less a day to perform the mediation. In addition to improved sleep, practitioners will reduce the stress on their minds and their bodies.
There are various types of meditation, and it may take trial and error to discover which works best. Breathing meditation has been shown to be effective, and so has sound or beat meditation. The former requires a person to sit and concentrate on their breathing, bringing air into the body through the nose. The latter technique is much like the name implies, with a person concentrating on a beat of sound. Mind meditation and transcendental meditation are two more types that have been proven beneficial in the fight against sleep deprivation.
